Although suicide is foremost a personal tragedy because of the loss of human life it entails and the devastating influence it can have on surviving family and friends, it has an impact on the economy as well. The economy suffers because of the many years of productivity and wages that victims forgo when they take their own lives. So T. Michael Kashner, Ph.D., J.D., a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and his coworkers set out to learn what suicides in the United Sates this year will ultimately mean for the American economy.

Using published data, they have come up with a sobering prediction: This year there will be a loss of 30,000 lives, leading to a total lifetime loss of 978,000 person-years and a total lifetime loss in productivity and wages valued at nearly $12.4 billion.

They report their prediction in the March issue of the journal T.E.N.— The Economics of Neuroscience, whose readers are primarily psychiatrists, neurologists, pharmacists, economists, and other professionals. It is published by MBL Communications in New York City.

Here are some of their other, related projections for this year:

• Women will comprise 51.1 percent of the population, but only 20.5 percent of suicides and 22.6 percent of person-years lost. The slightly greater percentage of years lost can be attributed to lower death rates from all causes (excluding suicide) among women.

• Although women will account for 20.5 percent of suicides, female suicides will result in only 11.3 percent of the wages lost to suicide—a result of women’s lower employment rates and lower wages. However, when including both wages and household production, female suicides will account for 18 percent of the total loss in wages and household production from suicides. The higher percentage reflects women’s greater contribution to household production.

• Most of the differences in total costs of suicides between women and men will be the result of higher suicide rates among men. Only 10.3 percent of the $7.925 billion difference in estimated lost productivity in both household and wages between men and women will be attributable to the higher wages paid to men.

• By far the age group at highest risk for suicide is the group between 20 and 44 years of age. Expected to comprise 36.5 percent of the population this year, this age group will account for 46.1 percent of suicides, 60.5 percent of lost person-years, 66.3 percent of lost total productivity, and 68.1 percent of lost wages.